Chris Paul and James Harden are ridiculous together in the clutch

Chris Paul and James Harden are ridiculous together in the clutch

PORTLAND, Ore. —In the nine games they’ve played together, the Rockets haven’t seen much of Chris Paul and James Harden together in crunch time — because there hasn’t been much crunch time to speak of.

After a run of blowouts that led to an eight-game winning streak, the Rockets finally got a close one in Portland on Saturday, holding on to beat the Trail Blazers 124-117.

As it turns out, Harden and Paul are just as good together in the clutch as they are normally.

Rockets scored on first seven clutch possessions with James Harden or CP3 scoring or assisting on every bucket.

As much as they’d prefer to keep blowing teams out, they were excited to finally get tested in a close game.

“We needed it,” Harden said after the game. “We’ve been beating teams by 15-plus, so it was good to lock down when we needed to, get stops when we needed to and just give ourselves the best chance of winning and that’s what we did.”

The Rockets’ closing lineup of Paul, Harden, Eric Gordon, Trevor Ariza and P.J. Tucker shot a ridiculous 83.3 percent from the field down the stretch, and Paul and Harden combined for 25 of their 40 fourth-quarter points.

If there were any doubts about how the Rockets will perform when a team plays up to their level and they can’t blow them out, Saturday’s performance went a long way toward answering them. Even Rockets general manager Daryl Morey acknowledged how much tougher the game was than their recent cakewalks.